Planning a New V&V / Mighty Protectors Campaign : The Dawn of a New Era, or Finally Burying the Past with Respect

Please forgive me my poor man's attempt at waxing poetic.

I had a realization last night, It may seem obvious to those of you reading these articles, but it wasn't so obvious to me. I have an unhealthy amount of nostalgia for the superhero campaigns of my past. Those campaigns were so entertaining and memorable they had me in an iron grip. As long as I was held in bondage by those memories I was not able to truly move on and make new and potentially better campaigns with all of the experience, and knowledge I've accumulated since they ended.

So the time has come to box up all the miscellaneous materials from the old days, and start fresh, to face the future with new and hopeful eyes full of wonder and excitement about a genre I love. To boldly face my fear that my best GMing days are behind me. To realize that I haven't even truly started to truly GM yet.

So now all the old NPC's are to be put away for good (literally). They will now live on only as stories of pleasant times that I shared with friends, no longer will they haunt me. No more will I waste time trying to recapture the past. 

From here on in I'm in terra Incognita, the undiscovered country that lays beyond the setting sun of the old campaigns moving towards the promise of a new dawn. It's time to step forward and see what Might Protectors & Vile Villains I might discover.

I cannot think of a better way to do this than to adopt and accept Villains & Vigilantes 3.0 : the Mighty Protectors as the worth successor and fresh start it is designed to be, all the while respecting its roots but not being hamstrung by them.

Again, Thanks for reading.

Erik a.k.a. Midnight

Planning a New V&V / Mighty Protectors Campaign : Sometimes New Does Not Equal Better

I still haven't made up my mind yet, but ....

A little while ago P.Michael created a character for Might Protectors. This was back when the idea of starting a campaign first germinating in my mind. I think the character was based on an old City of Heroes character of his.her name is Lady Psyche.

Well, in order to properly compare and contrast Villains & Vigilantes 2.x and Mighty Protectors. I spent time last night writing up the V&V version using our old method (well with a few amendments drawn from Might Protectors).. Let me show you!

First the Mighty Protectors version 

And Now for the Villains & Vigilantes 2,x Version .

Now I'm well aware that the Mighty Protectors sheet is very colorful and distracting, and perhaps has more visual appeal except for one thing. The teeny tiny illustration up in the right hand corner. You might say it's not THAT small, but it really is, especially when your used to an illustration 3-4 times bigger, like on the Villains & Vigilantes sheet. 

Both P.Michael and I agree that superheroes are the product of a visual medium. Marshal McLuhan's dictum that "the medium is the message" certainly seems to apply to superhero rpgs, So for me, the visuals of the character are very Important, thus the bigger the character illustration the better.

and I like the way that I can present the Information on the V&V sheet in a more narrative way. It lets me add details about the character and their powers that there just isn't room to do on the MP sheet, at least not in the same way.

If you read over the sheets, I know, I know "Too Long Didn't Read", but really, if you were to look at them, not the numerical stats stuff, but the descriptive text for the powers and such, I think you'll see what I mean. The V&V version just seem more like an entry out of the old "Handbook of the Marvel Universe" or DC's Who's Who Books. All the game information is there but its coated in a layer of yummy fluff that doesn't get in the way, yet alternatively expands on the characters powers and perhaps mindset in a useful way. and the corresponding sections of the Mighty Protectors sheet feel dry and clinical in comparison.

I think this is what keeps drawing me back to V&V, and makes it hard to embrace Mighty Protectors. Now mind you, I'm well aware that the way I do a character in Villains & Vigilantes is not the way most people do it, its just the way I've found that has traditionally worked for me. But it's one that I haven't yet found a way to replicate satisfactorily in Mighty Protectors ... Yet. 

Thanks for again for reading !

Erik a.k.a Midnight

Planning a New V&V / Mighty Protectors Campaign : System Choice, or Pick your Poison

O.k. now its time to do an analysis to try and figure out which version of Villains & Vigilantes is the right one for me. As I said in my last entry part of me wants to go with the new shiny of Villains & Vigilantes 3.0 : Mighty Protectors, but part of my heart really wants to return to the simplicity of Villains & Vigilantes 2.x.

Choosing Mighty Protectors would mean supporting a "Living" version of the rules. By "Living I mean that it's still being produced and supported by the authors Jeff Dee & Jack Herman through Monkey House Games. Most of the support at his point is products that were promised through the Kickstarter campaign (4 years ago), and those are being released at what seems like a snails pace. Frankly I'm beginning to doubt if we'll see all of the material that was promised as part of the Kickstarter at this point. All that being said I completely understand why, Monkey house Games is a Small Company; I think technically it really just Jack & Jeff (and maybe Manada Jeff's partner) they rely a lot on freelancers for some of the products. For example the upcoming War Heroes title was, I believe written by Brian K. Adams. The art was most likely done but either Jeff and or Tod Allen Smith, and the layout is being done by Jeff. Now this is supposed to be a 300+ page book so that's a lot of work for so few people, and one has to assume that they have day jobs on top of at all this (Lets face it very few individuals can manage to live off producing rpgs on its own)

Choosing Villains & Vigilantes 2.x means that, for the most part, I'd be choosing a "Dead", Well maybe more like "Undead" version of the rules. Due to the settlement it seems like new material may be very sparse in the future. It seems that Fantasy Games Unlimited (the original publisher of the game) can't sell a version of the rules at this point (MHG still sells both the PDF and "dead tree" versions of V&V 2.1), but they have been putting out some interesting source books and adventures right up until 2018. We haven't seem anything new since then. The FGU website does list a product called Mystic Foes in their "coming soon" section, but no release date is listed. Up until this point Monkey House Games has also been supporting V&V 2.1 by making sure that all their Mighty Protectors releases are "dual-stated" for both systems, but I don't know much longer this will continue. I can't see them "dual-stating" War Heroes it's just too much work to write up all the character in both systems (if this is a N.P.C. Heavy source book). 

Seeing as I have 90-100% of everything produced for both system at this point, it does sort of become a moot point. It's not like whichever system I choose the "RPG Police" will come and take all my materials away if either version becomes truly unsupported by either gaming company. 

I freely admit that math and I are not the best of friends, and this may colour my perceptions. Now many superhero systems rely on a "point buy" character creation system. This is done to maintain what is commonly called "character balance". In other words it's so that all the player's character's are on an even playing field when it come to combat effectiveness. In my opinion this balance is completely illusory, and don't even get me started on the social implications of this need to make sure that the other people's characters don't have some sort of advantage over your character. The fact remains that even using a point buy character creation system it is possible to create characters that vary widely in combat effectiveness. Trust me I could easily create a character that would be ineffective in combat but hyper-effective in investigation or some other non-combat role-playing situations. I would still have a blast playing that character. I believe that this type of non-combat character, or as they're often referred to as "sub-optimal builds",  are just as valid a choice as their combat focused brethren, they just take more creativity to play.  So since point build system aren't a guarantee of balance, except on a purely abstract mathematical basis, why bother?

Mighty Protectors uses a "point buy" system, it isn't a "pure" point buy system as it does allow for a high degree of random generation, but it does try to be a "balanced" system. This means that all Stats & Powers are built from points, even if these are determined randomly. This allow for a great deal of customization-ability at the cost of turning character creation into an accounting like exercise. All you have to do is ask my wife and she'll confirm that I have a prejudice against accounting, not that I can't do it, it's just unpleasant...Blech.... 

Villains & Vigilantes 2.x pretty much uses a random / somewhat narrative method for determining Stats & Power. The powers are mostly pre-designed and act as a guideline on how powerful each power should be. This allows powers to be tinkered with on a gut instinct basis. In fact, the game actively encourages the players and game masters to work together to come up with unique power using the other powers as guidelines. This doesn't mean there is no math in Villains & Vigilantes 2.x.  Hell the math used to figure out a character's carrying capacity is infamous for its formula ((S/10)^3+(E/10)) x (W/2), but that calculation only has to be done once per character (in general), and I can easily do that with a calculator. 

Villains & Vigilantes 2.x is an older game and uses a convention of its time, a look up table to determine target numbers for combat. This is a "feature" that particularly bothers my friend  Tim Knight of the Hero Press Blog and he has twisted himself in to pretzel knots trying to avoid, or replace it :). Mighty Protectors  is a newer game and has done away with combat look up table in favor of a much better system involving "to hit" numbers for each attack and a semi-static defense number. I'll admit this is a feature that weighs in Mighty Protectors favor. Another thing that Mighty Protectors does better than its predecessor is the way it handles skills / backgrounds, or rather how it explains their intended use much more clearly.than it was in Villains & Vigilantes 2.0. it's not the granular skill system found in many rpgs, but I think it is very flexible. 

Players wont be hearing "sorry johnny you didn't buy / put points into that particular skill that you absolutely need right now, even though as a (insert occupation here) it would make sense that you would know it, so you can't do it. Now if your a (insert occupation here) and you have a reasonable chance of knowing something about a subject, or how to use a skill, you get to roll on a d20 against the relevant stat save as determined by your game master +3. If you don't have relevant training or knowledge because of your background and it qualifies as "common knowledge" you make a flat roll against your stat save value; otherwise your at a -3. If it requires specialist knowledge, your screwed, unless you have detailed instructions and you roll a 1 (lower is always better in V&V/MP unless its damage)

Then there's matter of "feel". This is a much more intangible quality, and unfortunately nostalgia may heavily color how each game is perceived. If I discount the nostalgia aspect, as I probably should, there isn't much to separate the two games . Villains & Vigilantes 2.x is renowned for the way in which it really emulates the super-heroic genre well, its often been sited among those that have played it, as well as other superhero rpgs, how much it brings the feel of comic book super heroics to the tabletop. I've also heard from V&V players as well as Champions players how MP is a great deal of fun and feels very super-heroic. In some ways the Mighty Protectors rule book goes further than it predecessor in helping generate that standard "4-color" feel. The chapters on the Mighty Protectors Universe feels really good, and it;s a wellspring of inspiration on how to build your own comic book universe; much more so than the pages and pages of legal code included in the V&V 2.x rule books. 

The last thing to consider is system familiarity, I have years upon years of experience creating V&V 2.x characters. In fact I have a binder full of potentially reusable heroes and villains from the old campaigns. So in someways I wouldn't be starting all over from scratch, as far a creating characters goes. But, frankly some of those heroes & villains have worn out their welcome, though overuse (at least in my mind), but that still leaves a lot of them to be exploited. With Mighty Protectors its all gonna have to be built up from the ground floor. That could lead to some really interesting developments and characters ...then there's that old building MP character feels a lot like accounting problem.

There is so much to consider, and  as I said I might, I think I've over complicated it ... again. If any of you have any Insight or feedback that might help please leave a comment. 

Next time I write should have a decision made. (Hopefully)

Thanks for reading

Erik a.k.a. Midnight

Planning a New V&V / Mighty Protectors Campaign : What has Gone Before.

 

For anybody that knows me it comes as no surprise that super-heroic role-playing is my favorite genre to indulge in. It is also the one that causes me the most frustration. To paraphrase Khan Noonian Singh from Star Trek II: 

"It tasks me. It tasks me and I shall have it! I'll chase it 'round the moons of Nibia and 'round the Antares Maelstrom and 'round perdition's flames before I give it up!."

Superhero role-playing games (rpgs) were the third Genre of role-playing that I was ever exposed to. The first, as it was for many in the hobby, was the fantasy genre through the auspices of Dungeons & Dragons (Holmes edition) and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (1st edition). early on I played many standalone adventure and one-shots, but I never really engaged in what could be called a "Campaign" until much later under the dungeon-mastering of my friend Francois "Frank" Verpaelst  in his excellent "Thieves World" games. Fantasy is still my second favorite role-playing genre.

The second was post-apocalyptic role-playing through TSR's Gamma World (1st ed). My time spent playing Gamma World under my friend P. Michael Hodge could most certainly be considered a campaign in the classic sense, we had consistent characters that progressed through as series of interconnected situations and adventure. P.Mikey's Gamma World campaign was definitely a precursor to the genre that would later occupy the Lion's share of our early role-playing "careers". I say this because one of the major background features of his campaign was a secret society he created called "the Church of Mar-Vel". A group of cultist that had based their religion and philosophy on an incomplete archive of Marvel comics, and had begun to breed / engineer mutants with the powers and abilities of the gods from the holy books. I'm sure you can guess where this is leading .

An finally during a summer lull in gaming (most of our gaming revolved around school, both high school and C.E.G.E.P, which in Quebec is a bridge between HS and University) a friend called together a group of us he knew to be comic book / superhero aficionados to try an new rpg that he'd gotten his hands on. It turned out to be the boxed set of Villains & Vigilantes 2.0, and when we saw it I seem to remember we were all pretty excited about it.

We rolled up characters and our friend Carl ran us through the Intro module "Crisis at Crusader Citadel". I think most of were hooked at that point, I know that I was, and I'm pretty sure that P.Michael was too. not long after his Gamma world campaign wrapped up and he plunged head long in to V&V. Technically I started my V&V campaign first, but mine didn't shine as brightly or last as long as the campaigns run by PMikey. 

For over 20 years I've had a plethora of characters in P.Michael's campaigns. In order of appearance: from the Champions of Peace (C.O.P.s): Firebird (who was Erik Menard's super heroic Identity), Will-o-wisp, and The Magi (yes I know I accidentally used the plural in his name instead of the singular Mage), from the Pantheon: Midnight (perhaps the character that is most associated with me, Duh), From U.N.I.T.-M: Psi-Fire, Ghoul (a reworking of my original character form Carl's game), and finally Midnight once again. 

Since the U.N.I.T-M Campaign wrapped, and before that, I started searching for a replacement for V&V. Over time I think I became personally disenchanted with V&V as a rule set / mechanic. as the search progressed I found that I was judging all the replacements by the standard of Villains & Vigilantes 2.0. and after about 10 years I realized that all of the systems I investigated fell short of V&V in my estimation. Under my suggestion / insistence (but maybe I'm remembering it completely wrong) we ventured into the waters of Mutants & Masterminds 1st edition under PMikey, we even nominally play-tested M&M 2nd ed (our names appear in the play-testing credits) P.Michael seem to really like the system, it scratched an itch for him as a GM  that apparently V&V did not. Eventually the Intoxicating "New Game Smell" of M&M wore off for me sometime after M&M 3rd edition was release to the public, and our character of Virago II was release as an officially vetted PDF (made possible by backing the Kickstarter at an absurd level)  by Green Ronin, and the search started again.

Then Jack Herman & Jeff Dee, the original authors of V&V released Villains & Vigilantes 2.1 a cleaned up and reformatted set of V&V 2 rules, and began their battle to regain the their rights to publish their game. In the end they achieved a complicated compromise victory and began the process of getting Villains & Vigilantes 3.0: The Mighty Protectors Kickstarted and eventually out the door. This chain of events reawakened my interest in V&V and I began to reexamine it.

In the end I've come to the conclusion that It wasn't so much the rules / mechanics that I had become disenchanted with all those years ago, but rather I was beginning to rapidly lose faith in my abilities as a game master; my ability to tell an Interesting and compelling story. It took years to hit rock bottom, but I did hit it, and have been slowly rebuilding it ever since. so now I think I'm finally ready to pick up my GMing hat, dust it off, set it squarely on my huge melon and jump back in to the game. 

So, as I have discovered over the years, V&V really is my game, my only remaining question is whether to choose V&V 2.0 or V&V 3.0: Mighty Protectors. I'm concerned that I will of course unnecessarily over-complicate this decision. I want to go with the new shiny of Mighty Protectors, but part of my heart really wants to return to the simplicity of Villains & Vigilantes 2.x.

I will have to make a decision on this matter very shortly, as I have promised PMikey that I WILL run a Superhero campaign for him to finally play in, and after all the years enjoyment he's brought me as a player over the years (hell a lot of us). I think I owe him that, ... nay, I know I owe him that, and its time I paid up. 

Erik a.k.a Midnight 

Mighty Protectors: A New Start - A New Era

Lately I've been trying to conquer my gaming ADD. I've got it so bad I could be the poster child for the Telethon

Yes ladies and gentlemen, for only $1 a day you too can fund critical research into Gamer ADD. There are so many deserving gaming groups across the world in great need of a stable and committed Game Master. The problem is that so many potentially wonderful and skilled GM's never get to express that Inner genius, because they have the attention span of a fruit fly; Constantly flitting from one genre or game system to another and never settling down long enough to ....

It's been hard, but I'm sick and tired of wasting my time waffling all over the place concerning genre and system. Since I can't seem to stay away from gaming as a pastime, and Lord knows I've tried, I figured If I'm gonna put all this time and effort in to RPG's I should at least have something to show for those efforts.

So I settled on one of my greatest loves V&V/SHRPGs.

Then there was the question of what edition to use, I have literally decades of experience with Villains & Vigilantes 2.0 / 2.1, but its showing its age a bit, and I believe that he new 3rd Edition of V&V a.k.a. Mighty Protectors is a worthy successor. I also want to support Jeff Dee and Jack Herman of Monkey House Games for all the years of unmitigated joy I've had playing the game they designed.

V&V 2.x has a lot of baggage in my mind, especially the old characters that Percy Hodge and I designed all those years ago. So as a result I'm starting from Scratch with all new characters and N.P.C's. 

I thought I would take advantage of this day off due to American Thanksgiving to create the First N.P.Cs. So here is the first: Americana

Erik a.k.a.Midnight

Make Mine V&V !!!

Lately I've had a desperate yearning ... no ... NEED for some Super Hero Roleplaying action. So I decided to do something about it and I picked up my copy of The Mighty Protectors to refresh my memory of the system.

I’ve had V&V 3.0 / Might Protectors since its initial early Kickstarter releases, I’ve wanted to love it … but like my friend Tim Knight of HeroPress. I find the change to a point buy system has definitely dampened my enthusiasm. As a result I immediately started to spin back into my Eternal Quest for a SHRPG that would meet my needs, and inspire me. Then I started reconsidering my old love Villains & Vigilantes 2.X. That's when I ran in to this piece I wrote perhaps 8-10 years ago on another site when I was asked why I love V&V so much.  Funny thing is I find its still truly expresses most of my feelings on the V&V versus other SHRPG’s,

==================

Villains &Vigilantes was the third RPG I ever played, the first being AD&D 1st edition, then Gamma World 1st Edition, and then Villains & Vigilantes 2nd. This being said it has a HUGE nostalgia factor for me, but despite what some may think this is not a case of rose coloured glasses. I realize that Villains & Vigilantes has it flaws and peculiarities; all of which I have come to terms with over the years.

We played V&V for 10 solid years, and then sporadically after that for another 10 years, and I've run several successful campaigns with my original gaming group as well as another group while I was still in Sherbrooke (Quebec, Canada) cut off from the rest of my original gaming group here in Montreal. 

For many years I served as P.Michael’s, our primary GM’s, sounding board and occasional GM's Assistant. This was due to my comprehensive internalization of the core rules, at least until P.Michael began to heavily drift the V&V rules in a way that I had a difficult time grasping.

About 15 years ago I became unsatisfied with V&V, that or I was overcome by the initial stages of the gamer’s A.D.D that I'm starting to recover from just now, and I began a 15 year search for a suitable heir for to V&V. In the intervening years I have investigated a wide variety of Superhero RPGs. Hell my shelves groan more under the weight of the books that comprise that genre than any other. All of these systems were subconsciously held up to V&V as the golden standard, and of course all of them failed.

They failed for a number of reasons, but not because any of them were intrinsically Inferior to V&V, but because none of them approach the genre, and for that matter role-playing, from the same perspective as V&V in my opinion. It was that perspective that shaped my expectations about how a Superhero RPG should work. It also jived very well with my perception of how things worked, and what I like about the source material. The thing is, Villain & Vigilantes doesn't give a rats ass about game balance, and neither do I. (mind you I posted they on the Monkey House Games forums a while back and Jeff Dee took exception to that particular assertion, never the less I stand by it)

I have no patience for players who sit there and moan, bitch and whine that their character isn't as powerful as players X's character, and use that as an excuse to be disruptive during the session, and or using the power discrepancy as an excuse for throwing their hands in the air and pout until either they are bumped up to meet, or exceed, everybody else's power level or everybody else is brought down to their level (funny how nobody ever complains when there more powerful that everybody else Eh). Every other game (with the exception perhaps of the old Marvel Super Heroes Advanced Set by TSR) it predicated on placating these immature malcontents via "Game Balance", while in my opinion V&V approached the game with the attitude of "your all supposed to be mature Individuals, and yes fate can be a bitch, deal with it, make the best of a shitty situation". But, here's the trick, that's the kinda thing comic book characters have to deal with all the time.

Maybe I've been spoiled, but I've had the benefit and pleasure of associating with a lot of "mature" role players in my groups. That’s not to say that we haven't had our share of power gamers and munchkins, but overall, the players that have been involved in the supers campaigns I've played in have been fairly mature and level headed, and more interested in having fun, and telling a story, than one-upmanship, or any other form of competition with their fellow players. So, I've never really understood systems that enforce an artificial "Game Balance". I’d rather just tell player X to grow up already. (Truth is I'd love to be that blunt but, I rarely am.)

(My gratitude for such wonderful sessions goes out to P.Michael Hodge, John Moret, Russell Sangster, David Sangster, Peter Roffey, Jeremy Kidd, Mark Taylor, Francois Verpaelst, David Glenn, Gordon Evans, Lucien Soulban, and Luc Millette)

Another aspect of V&V that I find suits me to a tee is the random character creation. No other game, with the exception of Marvel Super Heroes, allowed, neigh encouraged that the hand of fate determine the heroes lot in super heroic life like V&V. In the comic books heroes rarely get to pick and choose their powers, rather the power are thrusts up on them, and they again must learn how to best use them to uphold and further, the common good; Yet, the system was not averse to players approaching the GM and discussing a concept with them and working in conjunction to flesh it out.

A very important reason why V&V appeals to me more than any other Super Hero RPG is because it isn't a point buy system. I can't stand, no I loath, the accounting required in point cost balancing. It's not that I'm adverse to math ( but lord knows I have my difficulties) Heck you should see V&V's formula for deriving carrying capacity. (((str/10)^3)+(end/10))*(weight/2) this I have no problem with, but I have never liked the balance sheet / general ledger methods of character creation, at least not for supers (Champions, Mutants & Masterminds, Etc. I’m looking at you.)

Last but not least is my familiarity with the rules, I can run Villains & Vigilantes in my sleep!! I no longer wish to be challenged by a system. I'm quickly losing the interest in learning complete rules systems. As a player I'm really starting to appreciate the wisdom of my old Pantheon member Mark Taylor when he said "just tell me what to roll". When I run a genre as near and dear to my heart as supers I don't want to argue over rules, and sweat the mechanics I want to concentrate on the story, and the action.

By today’s standard V&V is perhaps showing its age, yet Mutants & Masterminds, the undisputed top-dog in the Superhero RPG field, has had it's author Steve Kenson cite Villains & Vigilantes as one of it's primary sources of inspiration. It is often recognized on RPG.net as a underappreciated classic of the genre. So I join a small a, and somewhat vocal minority that is willing to say "Damn it this is a cool game despite it age and flaws" because I whole heatedly believe the cool / fun factor of the rules far outweighs its flaws.

So Make Mine V&V!! ( and get off my lawn with you newfangled games you young whipper snappers !! :) )

Erik a.k.a Midnight

 

Dead Games Society Villains & Vigilantes Retrospective With Jeff Dee — DGS EPISODE #44

A very nice interview with Jeff Dee of Monkey House Games on the Dead Games Society Podcast. It's all about V&V's past and it future as Mighty Protectors RPG.

http://dgsociety.net/uncategorized/villains-vigilantes-jeff-dee-dgs-episode-44/

Erik a.k.a. Midnight

Pleasant Sunday Making Characters

Logan and I are rolling up a Mighty Protectors Character. Great way to spend a Sunday afternoon. He rolled up a Pakistani national, with emotion control, non-corporeal, telekinesis, regeneration, with prejudice and nemesis. His motivation is dystopian

Needless to say he's a super villain n.p.c :)

Erik a.k.a Midnight

Villains & Vigilantes 3.0: Mighty Protectors is in the House

Well the Guys behind Monkey House Game (Jeff Dee & Jack Herman) Have finally given the kickstarter Backers a pre-release copy (No art  & no Mighty Protectors Universe background chapters) of  the new Villains & Vigilantes 3.0 rules.

You haven't been able to wipe the smile off my face since I downloaded them Friday, Thank you Jeff and Jack!

I'm really Liking what I'm reading!! There are some Significant changes to the Mechanics ( all for the better I'd say, patched a lot of "Holes" in the old rule set) but despite that is still feels very Much Like V&V.

I'm slowly working on a character to try out the Character Creation rules and I'm finding it very customizable, and even though the powers are more clearly defined, it still fell easy to create anything you might need even if its not already in there.

I'm really happy that they decided to release this Preview Copy, I wasn't too happy about possibly waiting till Summer to receive the hardcopies. What can't I say I'm an impatient kinda guy. Never been too good with delayed gratification.

I bought in big to the Kick Starter 2 Hardcovers 3 Softcovers all the Extras ( and as many in print as possible, some just weren't available in a Print versions)

But I'd like take this for a spin soonish!!

Erik a.k.a Midnight

Kicking the Tires on Villains & Vigilantes 3.0: Mighty Protectors RPG

It’s going to be hard to write this without sounding Like a raving Fanboy, But I’m going to try. Friday night when I got home I checked Facebook and saw that I had a message, when I looked to see who and what it was I discovered that it was from the last person I ever expected to send me a message, Jeff Dee one of the authors of Villains and Vigilantes. He was inviting me to participate in a demo of the soon to be released Villains & Vigilantes 3.0: Mighty Protectors Role Playing Game (Henceforth I will refer to it simply as Might Protectors to more easily differentiate it from its predecessor Villains & Vigilantes Revised) with Tim Knight, a friend and HeroPress blogger from the U.K. on Saturday afternoon.

The game is currently being Kickstarted, and as I write this it has 6 days Left. Its met its funding goals 2-3 days into the 30-day campaign, and has blown through 7 separate stretch goals and is working on reaching the 8th before it ends on Monday September 19th.

Now, for those of you that might not know I have a long history with this game. I began playing it in 1983, and it has formed the basis for the longest running campaign I’ve played in, or run. These campaigns were run by my dear friend P. Michael Hodge, and myself at different times.

Saturday morning rolled around and I was nervous, It’s not every day you get to play the newest iteration of your all-time favorite game with one of its authors. As the appointed hour rolled around I logged in to Skype and waited; it wasn’t long till until the call came in and introductions were made, then to quote Sherlock Holmes “the game was afoot”.

Jeff provide us with blank copies of the character sheet; essentially we were using the prototype of the spreadsheet based character creation tool that is available as an add-on to the Kickstarter Campaign. Then he asked use how we wanted to go about creating our characters, He described that it could be done in essentially 3 ways: completely random, random tweaked with character build points or purely using The character point build system. Already I was impressed with the versatility of the character creation system, and I hadn’t yet rolled a die or spent a point. Random generation systems don’t usually do well when translated and shoe horned into a point buying system, and Random generation systems grafted on to point buying systems, generally feel very restrictive. The fact that Jeff was so confident in the system and that it could do everything that he claimed it could, was heartening, but not surprising, as he has already told us that the system had been extensively play-tested for 5 years.

Tim, and I chose to start with the random system and see where it went from there. I was interested in seeing if the new rules, when used in “random generation mode”, could maintain the feel of the previous edition. So to that end we started by generating the person behind the Hero. 

We chose to be on the side of good but after that we rolled randomly for birthplace, species, culture, age, and sex. Now this is where it got interesting. Sex was determined by 3 separate rolls: gender identity, biological sex, and sexual preference. This is very much in keeping with both trends in modern comic books, and roleplaying games, to be as inclusive as possible. While this kind of mechanic is not absolutely necessary for a role playing game, it does encourage players to think outside of traditional gender/sexual stereotypes. The sex of Tim’s character was determined to be a Hetero-Sexual Cisgender Female, while mine ended up being a Lesbian Cisgender Female. We then moved on to our character’s motivations for being Heroes. Tim’s roll got him the motivation of “Glory Hound”, mine yielded “Need to know”. Next was origin type, the rolls were “science experiment” and “science accident” respectively.

Jeff then had us roll for out areas of background expertise, it was a series of three rolls of which we got to keep the two we though fit the best, or were the most interesting. Tim ended up keeping academia & agriculture, whereas I kept sports and law Enforcement. These backgrounds figure strongly into skills system presented in Mighty Protectors, helping to determine the difficulty of a character preforming a no combat action/skill roll.

We now move on to the basic characteristics, but before we did Jeff asked us what Power Level we wanted the characters to start at; the option he presented us with were Street Level (your typical cape and cowl Rooftop runners), “Normal” (think X-Men), or Cosmic (Jeff said this was the Avenger / Justice league type level). Villains and Vigilantes revised was set at the Normal Level by default, again more interesting options were showing themselves in this new edition of the game . Needless to say Normal was chosen so that we would have a better frame of reference to work from, and of course us old grognards needed to see how this new game stacked up against our old favorite. Based on our decision the initial point level limits were established for the mechanical portions of character creation. 

The Basic Characteristics of Strength (ST), Endurance (EN), Agility ( AG), Intelligence (IN), and Cool (CL) were randomly assigned to stats from a basic array of 18, 16, 14, 12, 10. We also rolled to determine our characters Weight. Since we were using the spreadsheet character creator many of the secondary and calculated statistics were populated at this point and I can’t accurately comment on how they truly interact not having seen the rules. I do have a minor concern that assigning stats off of a standard array will eventually lead to a bit of samey-ness in characters. But, as Jeff pointed out points can easily be shifted and/or redistributed between the stats with little or no penalty, so I may be completely off base here.

Selection of our character’s powers was up next. Jeff explained that powers are split up into 3 “loose” categories offensive, defensive, and miscellaneous/utility. I say “loose” because it’s apparently possible that offensive powers can have defensive aspects, and vise versa, and the miscellaneous/utility powers can sometimes be used in an offensive or defensive manner as well.

Jeff had us roll up 6 powers randomly, 2 from each category. We then were instructed to find the four powers that seemed the most interesting / cohesive, or simply the ones we wanted to keep. Although we were not forced to get rid of any of those powers at any time. He told us to assign those powers 20 points each in the cost column of the sheet as this was the point level that Random powers are assigned at the power level we had chosen earlier. We were also informed that we could roll up to 2 weaknesses. But we did not have to keep them but they would give us points we could use to modify the chosen base powers if desired, or be put in the others we wanted to keep if any.

Jeff helped us modify the chosen powers to fit our developing character concepts, I can’t really get too deep into it because Jeff did most of the heavy lifting here being the guy with the rules and all. But there did not seem to be any issue in making the powers match the way we wanted them to work. The flexibility hinted at here seemed powerful yet not overly complex which really help keep the feel of Villains and Vigilantes alive for me. After that Jeff listed out our character’s attack and defensive options as determined by our powers. All that was left was to give out characters names, and Identities. I have Included our finalized character sheets to show what we eventually ended up with.

We now moved on to a little traditional one on one hero against hero combat, using the old tradition of heroic first meetings turning into slugfests; at least until they, of course, figure out that they are on the same side after all. Jeff used this combat to give us a quick taste of some of the combat options and mechanics. Some of these were familiar from the previous edition, like “Rolling with Damage” that is using your power score to absorb some of damage dealt to your hit points, but at the cost of the energy to run your powers. In Mighty Protectors you can also use your power score to “Push” certain powers in ways that allow more damage or accuracy.

The old cross indexed attack/defense table has been done away with in favor of a calculated “to hit” target number, which in the grand old tradition of V&V is a roll under on a d20 mechanic. This is guaranteed to drive most diehard Dungeons and Dragons players insane, because as opposed to D&D a “1” is a critical roll in Might Protectors. The target to hit number is modified by the opponent’s defensive modifier (physical or mental). So for example, if I have a 14 or less to punch my opponent and they have a -4 physical defense now have to roll lower than 10 to hit on a d20.

The Initiative mechanics have changed from V&V to Mighty Protectors, but people who have super-speed can still act several times in a round, a feature I always loved in V&V. I’m glad to see its still here in a modified form. It allows Speedsters and characters with high reaction speed to feel impressive and deadly.

According to Jeff The old power of Heightened Speed has been broken up into it constituent parts. Super speed, the ability to act and move several times a round, Speed the ability to move faster, and Initiative Bonus allowing one to act before other characters in an imitative sequence. There’s that customizability coming to play in this new addition again. I Love that. 

The fight was quick, but not too quick. If not for a failed save on Tim’s part against my Paralysis Ray/Touch he would have cleaned my clock as I was depleting my power quickly trying to get past his defenses.

Jeff then took a few minutes to Introduce us to the new vehicle design system that they Introduced. Villains & vigilantes never really had much in the way of a vehicle system at all, and seeing as vehicles, and especially advance vehicles have such a long and proud history in the comics (can you say Batmobile, Blackbird, Quinjet) it always seemed like something that was missing in the previous versions of the rules. From what he described the system is very Modular and intuitive. And I look forward to seeing how the full system is described and implemented in Mighty Protectors.

In conclusion, I went into this demo of the Mighty Protectors with Jeff and Tim with a lot nervousness and trepidation. I was afraid that the changes to the system would end up making it feel too different from the Villains & Vigilantes I knew, and that the spirit of the game I loved so much would be lost. After this I can say that Jeff has proved to me that he hasn’t lost sight of what made V&V so much fun, and endearing, and has found a way to bring this classic system into a new Era. Based on this experience I’d say I’ll be very happy with the Might Protectors RPG for years to come.

I want to say thank you to Jeff Dee for taking 3+ hour out of his Saturday to run this for a couple of old time fans, that is just amazing. It was truly amazing opportunity, and I know I had a blast.

If you haven’t Pledged on the kick starter yet, what the heck are you waiting for? 

After all there’s plenty of Villainy out there, and it won’t thwart itself you know!! 

Thanks for reading 

Erik a.k.a Midnight